Men wash rugs in the Niger River as it flows outside of Bamako. For little less than three dollars a day, the men roll carts through the neighborhoods each morning, collecting rugs from homes as they go, and returning them at night after they've washed and dried each one.

Young boys ride horses through the dirt streets of Marseille, a neighborhood one hour outside of Bamako. Many young men leave their villages and come to Bamako to live and work until their family has put enough money together to pay for them to attempt a journey to Europe, typically with France as the final destination.

A young man named Mahamadou Doukara, 25, washes his clothes at the compound where he lives in Marseille. His family sent him from his village in Western Mali to live with his aunt in Marseille four months before in order to wait for his chance to attempt reaching Europe - a journey he has learned he will soon begin.

A Senegalese migrant and a Mauritanian man take a break from the long car ride to the border and walk the desert road in northern Mauritania. Aside from Mahamadou, the car carries two Senegalese migrants and one Mauritanian.

Exhausted and stressed, Mahamadou holds his head as the car drives late into the night towards Morocco. Without enough to pay the 500 Euro bribe Moroccan officials demand at border, Mahamadou will be turned back at the border early the next morning.

Mahamadou and another Malian migrant from Mahamadou's village stare north off the coast of Rabat towards Spain. "I can see Spain! There! Can you see it? I can see Spain - it's right there!" Mahamadou yells.

West African migrants sleep in the tent where they've spent the last four months in Tangier, Morocco. Migrants, even those with residency, occupy a tenuous place in Moroccan society with most living along the margins in places that can be destroyed at any moment by Moroccan authorities.

Mahamadou holds his head, pressing his hands against his face to try and push back tears. He has just spoken with his family who have said they cannot send him enough to cover the new cost of the boat, and refuse to waste money for daily expenses that wouldn't get him to Europe.

Amadou Keita, a Gambian migrant stands in the mist with another migrant and beg for a car to stop and give spare change as it winds along a mountain road towards the nearby Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Spain. "I've tried twice. Each time, they send me back," said Amadou of his attempts to scale the heavily militarized fences surrounding Ceuta, "We keep trying."

Jammeh Kane, 65, holds his head and cries in his home near Tambacounda, Senegal. His 25-year-old son, Boubacar Kane died in April along with more than 700 migrants when their boat sank off the coast of Libya.